Continuous Curriculum Review in a Bachelor of Nursing Program: Preventing Curriculum Drift and Improving Quality

Abstract

Higher education institutions have rigorous internal accreditation processes for new courses and typically require thorough course reviews every 5 years. Courses such as nursing must also be accredited by professional registration boards. However, in the years between initial accreditation and formal reaccreditation cycles, the risk of a widening gap between the accredited curriculum and the taught curriculum is real when there is no process to monitor the changes that individual unit assessors make to their subjects as they teach them. This curriculum drift may interfere with the intended development of graduate attributes and the taxonomic structure of assessment tasks across the course. This article describes the implementation of a formative continuous curriculum review process that prevents curriculum drift and enhances the quality of a bachelor of nursing curriculum.

Quality assurance and quality enhancement of the nursing curriculum – happy marriage or recipe for divorce?

“…The QE approach provided a means of capacity-building teaching skills through sharing of ideas and mentoring and also developed in academic staff a wider perspective of curriculum and development of graduate attributes. Van de Mortel and Bird [12] previously identified capacity-building teaching skills through the sharing of ideas, mentoring new staff, encouraging reflective practice, and broadening the perspectives of academic staff from a focus on their own individual units to a sense of collective responsibility for the whole course with an appreciation of the development of graduate attributes across multiple units as potential benefits of this curriculum review process. Our results suggest that academics participating in the curriculum review process can also see those benefits.…”

“…The curriculum review process under investigation was originally conceived as a 'bottom up', internal, QE process that aimed to stop 'curriculum drift' within the five year formal review cycle [12] and protect the graduate attributes and nursing competencies that were designed into the accredited curriculum. The process, implemented in 2006, involved nurse academics meeting in curriculum teams by year of the course (the term course refers to the degree program) along with the Course Coordinator, representatives from the Teaching and Learning Centre, Academic Skills Development Unit and the Library, prior to and after each of two teaching periods in the University's academic year, to review the curriculum both as it was planned and enacted [13] to see how improvements could be made.…”

“…The process, implemented in 2006, involved nurse academics meeting in curriculum teams by year of the course (the term course refers to the degree program) along with the Course Coordinator, representatives from the Teaching and Learning Centre, Academic Skills Development Unit and the Library, prior to and after each of two teaching periods in the University's academic year, to review the curriculum both as it was planned and enacted [13] to see how improvements could be made. The process and its perceived outcomes are described by van de Mortel and Bird [12] .…”

Exploring Australian undergraduate pre-registration nursing curricula: Where do science subjects fit?

“…In addition, it has been claimed that the rapid increase in detailed scientific knowledge of the last few decades has made it increasingly difficult to identify just what foundational knowledge is required to support practice (Estabrooks et al, 2005). Regular course reviews are recognised as contributing to an increase in the material to be covered (Arthur & Baumann, 1996) and most programs undergo revision on a five-year cycle (van de Mortel & Bird, 2010).…”

Think-Value-Communicate-Lead (TVCL): A Framework For Developing Family Professionals

“…Another concern was adherence to the curriculum as planned. As with any curriculum, over time there is curricular drift or a widening gap between the planned and approved curriculum and the curriculum that is actually taught (van der Mortel & Bird, 2010). Finally, there are changing needs of families based on societal, political, and economic shifts as well as research advances, which in turn shift employment opportunities and employer needs.…”